Last week, Chief US Bankruptcy Judge Carla Craig firmly settled the legal question of whether parents receive any benefit from sending their children to local parochial schools.

Her answer was a resounding “yes.”

The judge dismissed an unprecedented case brought last March in New York’s Eastern District by bankruptcy trustee Robert Geltzer against Brooklyn’s Xaverian High School and Staten Island’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel-St. Benedicta.

Geltzer sought to recover the $45,000 a bankrupt Staten Island couple spent on their kids’ tuition, arguing that the parents did not benefit from the expenditure.

Craig shredded Geltzer’s case.

In a 21-page decision, she wrote: “The trustee’s claims are based on a fundamentally flawed legal theory that is, moreover, at odds with common sense. The education provided … to these minor children constitutes both a direct and indirect benefit to their parents, who, with their children, must be considered a single economic unit.”

The judge also noted that trustees have no power over debtors’ pre-bankruptcy personal decisions about educating their children.

“She recognized the implications of the trustee’s argument and the door that would be opened” if he prevailed, said Mount Carmel’s attorney, Benjamin Feder of Kelley Drye & Warren.

Geltzer’s attorney, Daniel Gershburg, did not respond to requests for comment.